I blogged on Tuesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller claimed that Paul Manafort, the former chairman for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, lied to the FBI and investigators “on a variety of subject matters.”

At a hearing in federal court Friday morning, prosecutors said they are also weighing leveling new criminal charges for Manafort, contending that he obstructed justice and committed additional federal crimes since entering a plea agreement with the special counsel in September.

“That determination has not been made,” said special counsel attorney Andrew Weissmann.

Weissmann’s contention led judge Amy Berman Jackson, a member of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., to set a tentative March 5 sentencing date for Manafort.

Prosecutors will file their more detailed explanation of what they believe Manafort lied about to investigators on Dec. 7. Manafort’s defense team will then have until January to reply, leading to a likely late January hearing on the matter.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson “set a tentative sentencing date for March 5 in the case.”

It’s important to remember that none of these “moves by Mueller has definitively answered the question of whether Trump or his associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.” Trump doesn’t appear to be in any trouble just yet.

Each charge in Manafort’s plea agreement is up to five years in prison. A court will sentence him “on eight felony accounts in a separate case in Virginia in February.”

Manafort and his team said that “he did not violate the plea deal.” The plea agreement meant Manafort forfeited “multiple bank accounts and properties – including his apartment in Trump Tower in New York – and to cooperate with investigators by participating in interviews, providing documents and testifying in court.”

As it is, the plea agreement specifies that if prosecutors decide that Mr. Manafort has failed to cooperate fully or “given false, misleading or incomplete information or testimony,” they can prosecute him for crimes to which he did not plead guilty in the District of Columbia. They could also conceivably pursue the 10 charges on which the Virginia jury failed to reach a consensus. Mr. Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced in the Virginia case on Feb. 8.

The apparent goal is now to raise enough dust to make people believe it’s smoke and there is a fire. The goal isn’t to achieve justice or even truth, but politically damage the President so much that he gets nothing done in the last two years and (they hope) so damage him as to make him unable to be re-elected. A bright spot is both Flake and Corker will be gone from the Senate, thus eliminating a couple of otherwise useless burrs from under the President’s saddle.

I’ve been saying for months. It doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter Scooter Libby wasn’t the one that reveal the identity of that desk-piloting CIA skank, and they all knew goddamn well who did.

Mueller is going to indict somebody big on charges that will never, EVER hold up in court, and call it a win. And it’s probably going to be Don Jr.

So if the plea agreement is being pulled by Mueller, does that mean Manafort gets his property back?

Yeah, yeah. I know the answer to that one.

This seems to be a legal ratchet. I mean racket. Well, a little of each. Mueller digs up a few dozen charges that the Justice department had no interest in prosecuting a few years ago, pumps millions of dollars into the investigation of them to make good sounding cases, then goes to Manafort. “Testify and we’ll reduce the trumped-up charges.” Then once Manafort has done as Mueller demanded, claim he lied and dump all the charges back on him *plus* perjury.

Said it before, I’ll say it again. Any lawyer with older client materials that they are not legally *required* to keep should be running their shredder 24/7.

All the attacks on Trump, since before the election was designed to accomplish one thing, protect former members of the government from going to jail. Mueller was up to his eyebrows in the Uranium One affair. So was Rob Rosenstein. HRC, WJC and members of the Clinton Foundation and the State department are looking at jail time for several different peccadilloes. Then we have Clapper, Brennan and Comey. More people looking at potential orange jumpsuits. And, the whole management team of the DOJ, FBI, State and most of the rest of the federal bureaucracy. The Mueller investigation is just a protection racket.

So, now we have the Dems controlling the House. Uranium One coming onto the radar again. Potential investigations into FISC fraud. Illegal spying on US citizens including those in an opposing Presidential campaign. Leak investigations. Jeff Sessions in no longer in a position to protect the Establishment. Even CNN is beginning to question whether there was any rump.Russia collusion. Mueller and the rest of the deep state are sweating.

This is all about protecting the Establishment and those who are part of it.